The following disclosure relates to network communication.
Delivery of broadcast television signals has advanced over the years from classical over-air delivery channels to cable, satellite, and telephone delivery systems. As the delivery mechanisms have changed, so have the challenges in delivering the content efficiently to the consumers. Delivery of the content is constrained by resources of the delivery systems including bandwidth limitations of the communication channels used. As content has expanded to include pay-per-view services, digital music and a myriad of new channel offerings, the challenges to the delivery systems to provide such content efficiently have grown. Relatively recently, additional system level pressure has been added due to the demand from the consumer for higher quality content delivery (e.g., high definition television, HDTV).
Most delivery systems have inherent bandwidth limitations that limit the amount of content that can be delivered. The bandwidth limitations can be resource dependent or channel dependent, in that limitations may exist in each end of the delivery system at a transmit or receive side (e.g., finite amount of data that is able to be transmitted or received by the transmitting or receiving devices), or in the communication channel itself (e.g., bandwidth at a given frequency for broadcast, or downlink bandwidth provided in a digital subscriber line (DSL) system).
In the last 10 years, the existing telephone company infrastructure system (hereinafter the“Telco System”) has been utilized to deliver content to users. DSL systems have been made available to provide high speed internet access to consumers. The Telco System has inherent bandwidth limitations in the amount of data that can be delivered over the copper paths prevalent in the system. These limitations have limited the effectiveness of using the Telco System to deliver high bandwidth content over the existing system. With the advent of advanced codec technology, the Telco System is now a viable delivery system for standard definition and high definition video and audio services. As a practical matter, other delivery systems (satellite for example) are not as constrained in terms of bandwidth. Further consumer applications that necessitate even more bandwidth, for example watching and recording different channels, have made the Telco System less desirable overall as a delivery mechanism.